A love letter to San Francisco, Web.com and Steph Curry

Fun things happened last week for The Daily Rally.

We got our first sponsor (!!!) and partnered with Esquire to bring you content from Steph Curry’s debut in the field of the Ellie Mae Classic. What a life. Moving up in the world.

Web.com has been a friend of The Daily Rally for a while. So when we got together and said hey, let’s see what we can make happen for this very exciting Steph Curry filled Web.com Tour event, I was like pshh yeah.

So not to get to mushy about things, but when I started The Daily Rally as a side project along with my full-time gig at the PGA TOUR a couple years ago, Web.com always supported me and wanted to know how they could help. This weekend was a huge step for our relationship (basically, they gave me a rose) and it was pretty amazing. And that’s the thing – that’s what Web.com does for their customers. They help out local businesses who need a team and support when it comes to building a website and a digital presence.

I talked to Web.com Tour player Justin Hueber about his thoughts on the company and the event.

“Even though golf is an individual sport and we are out there by ourselves, we still rely on our team outside of the ropes,” Hueber said. “Our families, friends, caddies, agents, and coaches are our teammates and are behind us the whole way as we try to reach the highest level. Without the support from my team it would be almost impossible to achieve my goals. Web.com does that same thing for its customers.”

Ya heard it here.

Ok enough waxing poetic about how much I love Web.com and would recommend them to any small business looking for a little help in the digital department.

Onto a look back at my week in San Fran

So, I followed Steph Curry during his second round at the Ellie Mae Classic last Friday. I have so many thoughts and gathered some thoughts from other Web.com Tour players in the field. Let’s do this.

First of all, I have been #blessed to go to a lot of golf tournaments the past few years. I have attended the Players Championship every year since I was five, and I traveled to 14 tournaments on the PGA TOUR last year. Hello frequent flier miles.

This tournament felt like a top-tier TOUR event and it was because a community, a league, players and the media rallied around Steph Curry being in the field. He could have shot a million and the week would have been a success. Even better – he shot eight over to miss the cut in a very respectable way.

He interacted with fans, his wife interacted with fans, he took the tournament seriously but was still the chillest guy and seemed to have a lot of fun. I was blown away at the crowd and also the hills because hello, those were some very steep hills at TPC Stonebrae.

I think I expected to walk away feeling like “Oh, ok that was cool. But he could have just played in the Pro-Am and that would have been fine.” Instead I walked away feeling like this should be a new formula for events. Granted, I understand that not every famous athlete has Steph’s demeanor (Steph – we’re on a first-name basis) nor do they have his talent on the course, but the amount of people not only at the tournament but around San Francisco who knew about this event because he was in it was huge.

I also found that players felt the same way, and not just players who are ranked inside the top 25 on the money list and have their cards locked up, but ones who are looking for starts or need to keep focused through the end of the season to get inside the 25. My boy Hueber and a couple of his buddies attended a San Francisco Giants game with me to keep the content creation going and I asked them their thoughts.

“I think it was a fantastic job by the tournament sponsor and Web.com to get Steph to play the event,” Hueber said. “The buzz it generated for the event was a huge boost to Web.com and us players. It was cool to see a few thousand people out there even on Monday and Tuesday. It would be neat to get a guy like that most weeks just to get some more people talking about our events.”

He told me that it added a little extra something to everyone’s day knowing how much people cared that Steph was there. If a guy being included in the field elevates players’ enthusiasm to be out there as well as generates a lot of buzz, we have a pretty good situation on our hands.

So, those are my thoughts on behalf of The Daily Rally. Golf is quite near and dear to my heart *single tear* and to see people who never would have come to a golf tournament in general out there supporting a Web.com Tour event was the best.